Every year I find myself craving something sweet but not TOO sweet; tart but not TOO tart; and fruity but not — you get it. I want a holiday drink to get in the mood for the requisite festivities, whether that be Christmas, Candlenights or anything in between. I secretly like this time of year. It’s super cosy. I’d like to be able to drink something that represents this time of year without getting even a little drunk in order to facilitate that cosiness.
A few years ago I found my soul-beverage-mate: Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash. This Pepsi creation is the perfect balance of cranberry juice and lemon lime soda, a combination you’d think would taste terrible but actually tastes sublime — as it turns out, and despite what cranberry sauce would have you believe, cranberry-infused soda is pretty good.
The problem — the only problem — is that it’s only available a) during the holidays, b) in select regions of the country and c) in certain stores (like Walmart). I don’t know why Pepsi would make the nectar of the gods and then choose to withhold their promethean creation from most of humankind but there you go, that’s capitalism for you.
Nov. 2 marked the first day of shipment for this year’s batch of Mist Twst Cranberry Splash, and as of Monday, Nov. 6, it does not appear to have hit stores in my area. The search goes on, and it goes on in increasingly panicked progression as we roll through the holidays.
Fear not: there are alternatives. In second place on my list of all-time favorite holiday drinks:
Alternative #1: Canada Dry Cranberry
Much like Mist Twst Cranberry Splash, Canada Dry’s cranberry offering is a high quality Yuletide beverage.
Pictured: canned jolliness
I can’t stress this enough: Cranberry ginger ale and cranberry Mist Twst* stand basically neck and neck in the festive soft drink power rankings. This is some scrumptious shit and I would not fault anyone for putting it at the top of their favorite holiday soda list instead of Mist Twst. I would even go so far as to say that Canada Dry Cranberry pulls ahead in some respects.
The main category Canada Dry leads in is longevity, far and away. You can leave Canada Dry out for a couple hours and come back to adequate fizz for adequate enjoyment. Mist Twst will go flat within an hour or less. Tastewise, Mist Twst edges Canada Dry out by honestly being the most perfect proportion of cranberry and lemon-lime ever made. Canada Dry tries and almost succeeds to meet and maybe surpass its competition at the top, but the ginger ale aspect ends up being too strong and overpowers the mix just slightly.
Alternative #2: Cranberry sparkling cider (Any brand)
You gotta respect the classics.
This gets third place in my delicious-fizzy-Chrimbus-drink lineup, if only because I have a lot of nostalgia for these choices. This is the stuff you buy on New Years Eve for your kids (or adult-age Straight Edge friends and family) if you want to help make them feel like they’re participating. The taste is fine — it’s sparkling cider with cranberry juice infused, so yeah — and it probably is aesthetically superior to the other soft drinks on this list ahead of it, but it suffers in two places: quantity and price.
Sparkling cider, per bottle, is costly. You generally can get three 25 fl.oz bottles for about $10, which is MUCH cheaper than alcohol, granted, but the smaller container size and lack of bulk packaging options means you’re gonna run out and buying more will place a larger financial burden on you in the long run.
Alternative #3: Sprite Cranberry
This stuff is… mediocre.
Let me get this out of the way: the Coke vs Pepsi wars are stupid. Aside from the macro-level horrifying realization that you’ve been subtly conditioned for your entire life to root for one megacorporation’s sugary slurry over another’s, most folks do not hold stiff ideological commitments to one company or the other and everyone who drinks soda will drink from both concerns’ corn-syrupy teats at least once.
(I’m sorry to break it to you in that way, but there it is.)
When it comes to this soda here, however, everything that can go wrong with carbonated cranberry chemistry did, in fact, go wrong.
First of all, the noble, humble cranberry barely makes an appearance in this disappointment of a festive fountain drink. It’s like… Mark Hamill’s 10-second appearance in JJ Abrams’ Star Wars offering. It’s exciting, yes, but the marked lack of berry cheapens the overall experience.
Second of all, this drink is CLEAR. They’re selling a clear cranbeverage like we wouldn’t notice. This is such a jarring idiosyncrasy. I don’t even know what to say here. Yeah, this is technically an alternative to Mist Twst Cranberry Splash but it’s like, there are better ones. Don’t do this to yourself if you can help it.
Are there more cranberry-blessed beverages out there? Let me know on Twitter: